Growing the Rail Network
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Promoting Britain’s Railway for Passengers and Freight www.railfuture.org.uk @Railfuture GROWING THE RAIL NETWORK A discussion paper by Mike Crowhurst Railfuture Chairman 2004-2012 This document was originally published in 2005. Clearly a lot has changed since then, but a lot is still relevant too. The content of the paper is presented unchanged. www.railfuturescotland.org.uk www.railfuturewales.org.uk www.railwatch.org.uk follow us on Twitter: @Railfuture @Railwatch Join Online at www.railfuture.org.uk/join Book conferences at www.railfuture.org.uk/conferences The Railway Development Society Limited is a (not for profit) Company Limited by Guarantee. Registered in England and Wales No. 5011634. Registered Office:- 24 Chedworth Place, Tattingstone, Suffolk IP9 2ND GROWING THE RAIL NETWORK – DISCUSSION PAPER FROM 2005 1. Why grow the Network? Why not? Ok, it’s not that simple. So let’s just step back a few years, to the Ten-Year Plan for Transport, which was John Prescott’s great contribution to the debate in Labour’s first term. Among other things, this proposed an increase of 50% in rail passenger usage, 80% in rail freight, and an end to overcrowding. This was to be part of an overall plan for sustainable, integrated transport. The obvious implications for rail capacity were not explored. But within a year or so we had first the fuel tax protests, when a small but vociferous interest-group succeeded in overturning the government’s good intentions at a stroke. Ironically at first this actually increased rail usage, but then came Hatfield. Until Hatfield the privatised railway had in effect been living on borrowed time. Restructuring, fragmentation, competitive franchising, and profit maximisation dominated the scene, distracting attention from years of underinvestment especially in infrastructure, which eventually led to disaster. The Hatfield crash brought home the consequences of this with a vengeance, and the system virtually collapsed. Ironically we were on course before Hatfield to achieve the 50% passenger & 80% freight growth targets within eight years. This was probably a bit too optimistic, but now we are back to “predict and provide” on the most environmentally damaging modes - road and air, but stagnation on the railways. Indeed we now have “promote and provide” for airports, judging by the 2003 White Paper on Aviation, and “predict and overprovide” for motorways if the latest proposals for the M6 are anything to go by. There is no sign of the equivalent long-term investment planning needed throughout the rail system if it is to take a greater share of the load. Restraining demand for air travel, even just by fair taxation, is not contemplated. Instead, every bit of demand generated by absurdly low fares and “air-miles” promotions has to be accommodated by yet more runway construction especially in the South East. Admittedly some tentative steps are being taken to restrain demand for road travel, notably the London Congestion Charge (opposed by the Government until TfL proved it works!) and the proposed lorry vignette scheme. Motorway charging is seen only as a trade-off for extra capacity rather than as a tool for restraining demand, -flying in the face of the conclusions of the Multi-modal study for the M6 corridor. Road building and motorway widening continue apace, and airport plans grow ever more horrifying. It is not as if there is any shortage of demand for rail travel, with both London Underground and “National Rail” reportedly breaking through the billion passenger barrier in 2003. Why then is no comparable “predict and provide” policy applied to rail? Of course we need the existing network to work reliably first, but that should not preclude some serious longer-term thinking about new rail capacity. That simply is not happening. This strategic planning should have been the job of the Strategic Rail Authority during that body’s short life. Not only did its senior managers eschew this task in favour of detailed hands-on regulation, but they actively discouraged any Train Operating Company or franchise bidder that dared to look beyond the artificially short horizon of the franchising process and do any long-term planning themselves. So the mode of transport that offers potentially the least environmentally damaging option to cater for medium and longer distance travel demand, languishes in limbo whilst the most damaging modes are allowed -even encouraged, to grow apace. This makes no sense! The Government should get back to the excellent principles of the Ten Year Plan. It should stop building ever more roads, motorways and airports. It should change the way we pay for motoring, replacing flat-rate charges such as VED with distance-based as-you-go charging such as fuel tax, area congestion charges and motorway tolls, as well as lowering speed limits and enforcing motoring laws. It should restrain air travel (especially short-haul) with reasonable taxation on aviation fuel. It should also get serious about integration between all public transport modes -something which other countries take for granted. Government should actively help the railways to become yet more sustainable by promoting further electrification, and by utilising renewable power sources. As demand for rail travel grows, it should give as much encouragement to growing the rail network as it has previously given to growing the road/motorway network or the aviation networks. It should start by reaffirming the growth targets for rail in the Ten Year Plan, albeit the target date needs to be revised. Since we have already largely wasted the first five years (thanks partly to Hatfield), perhaps 25 years (2030) would now be more realistic given the ponderous pace at which things happen in this country. 2. “Open Access” - the White Hope of Privatisation Logically the first step towards increasing the role of rail is to make better use of the network we already have. Indeed, prompted by a European Directive (91/440), this was one of the vowed objectives of the 1993 Railways Act. In a gradual process controlled by the Regulator, the network was to be opened up to innovative train operators running new services where capacity was available. On the freight side it should be said, this policy has had some modest success. But on the passenger side, despite some brave attempts, very little enduring benefit has been achieved. There is one clear success, coincidentally the first in the field, Hull Trains, a venture by GB Rail, then Anglia franchise-holder, to link that city regularly to London. They now have five daily trains each way, which are well supported. The same company’s second venture beyond their home territory was less happy. Anglia CrossRail was a brave attempt to give their customers a direct link to places on the far side of London including Heathrow airport. It failed largely because the chosen route through West London necessarily involved fitting between frequent all-stops services on two-track lines, with the result that cross-London transfers were faster and in most cases no less convenient. Hopefully the real CrossRail will one day meet this need rather more effectively. Other imaginative ideas fell foul of SRA policy. Wales & West (and later Wessex) trains sought to connect points as far afield as West Wales and Manchester with the South Coast and Waterloo (for Eurostar) via Bristol. This did not fit with SRA tidy-mindedness on single- franchises in London termini. It survives only in attenuated form as a SWT service to Bristol. The same company laid the foundations for a new East-West corridor by trialling an Oxford- Bristol service. Although this had some limited success, it was killed off by the SRA on totally spurious grounds of line capacity. The real reason was that the SRA wanted the stock used more profitably elsewhere. A similar fate befell the Leeds-Glasgow through service (via Carlisle) reinstated by Arriva after many years’ pleading by users. In this case the excuse for the axe was the even more preposterous allegation of unreliable units delaying West Coast mainline services (a classic case of pot calling kettleblack!). Also in the north of England, Grand Central’s plans for a new TransPennine service failed to pass the Regulator’s scrutiny, more because of fears of revenue abstraction from established services than lack of capacity. But perhaps the saddest lost opportunity was the refusal to allow Midland Mainline either to continue their service to Manchester instigated during West Coast engineering blockades nor provide their long-sought Leeds service. The Manchester service has proved very popular, and both would have taken Midland beyond the limit of their present franchise territory at Sheffield, back to major cities once served by their predecessors. But again the SRA had other ideas, so not only elderly HSTs but also some new Turbos (these admittedly soon reallocated) went back to the Rolling Stock companies to keep the accountants happy. The lack of rolling stock is regularly used as an excuse not to introduce new services, when in reality perfectly serviceable older stock is readily available but withheld by the ROSCOs purely to avoid “depressing the market”. Not exactly an encouraging precedent, but at least these examples demonstrate that there is an appetite for innovative services on the existing network on the part of both operators and passengers if bureaucratic hurdles can be overcome, but the scope may initially be limited by available capacity. 3. Where to grow the Network -what has been achieved so far Growing the network can take many forms, some quite modest, for example, simply adding new or reopened stations. Around 300 stations have been added to the network since 1960, the peak years being 1986, 87 and 88 with two dozen each, but since privatisation the rate has declined considerably.